Foodstuffs

A food blog from NHPR news, digital, & programming staff, exploring food & food culture around the state & the New England region. On-air features air Thursdays on All Things Considered and Saturdays during Weekend Edition.

Smuttynose Brewing Company's new brewery opens Saturday in Hampton, NH. Below is an audio postcard in which Smuttynose's "Master of Propoganda," JT Thompson, gives a tour of the $24 million energy efficient brewery, which produces 65,000 barrels of beer each day.

The 2014 Locavore Index again ranks New Hampshire's local food system as one of the strongest in the country, rating third behind Vermont and Maine.

Martin Langeveld of Strolling of the Heifers, the Vermont organization which produces the Locavore Index, talks with All Things Considered host Brady Carlson about how New Hampshire's food system is growing and changing.

In the late '90s, craft beer saw a renaissance of sorts. After years of nondescript light beers almost completely dominating the market, tastes seemed to wake up. Breweries and brew-pubs started up almost overnight. A boom was born.

Nana never made this dish. There is no family recipe for Timpano that has passed down through generations of Parrellas. But when it comes to inspiring nostalgia for the cooking of my grandmother, there’s nothing like Big Night.

Last week I tagged along with a man in Weare who’s tapping black birch trees for their sap. While its syrup is not as sweet as maple syrup, it can be an unexpected and tasty ingredient in home-brewed beer.

Dartmouth College - that hallowed, prestigious Ivy League institution of higher learning - is now home to a food truck.

It's known as The Box, and it will serve Mediterranean-style sandwiches, salads and other foods, while giving students at the Tuck School of Business a chance to manage and operate a private, for-profit business.

Small businesses looking to scale up sometimes use what are called incubators – spaces that give them access to additional expertise or resources without having to take on a lot of additional cost.

New Hampshire is home to a food business incubator. It’s called Creative Chef Kitchens in Derry, and owner and founder Neelima Gogumalla joins All Things Considered host Brady Carlson to talk about it.

It’ll likely be several more weeks before most of New Hampshire's syrup producers boiling their sap into maple goodness, but there are big ideas and changes in the air these days around syrup production, from new grading standards for syrup-producing states and Canadian provinces, to research on sap that suggests syrup could be produced in a way that's something akin to a row crop.

The 9th annual Wine Week wraps up in New Hampshire Thursday night with a big event in the Manchester Radisson from 6-9 where about 1800 wines will be featured along with several wine personalities. NHPR’s Ryan Lessard checked out two events Wednesday night where some Napa Valley winemakers and vineyard owners made an appearance and produced this audio postcard.

Every chair lift ride up Pats Peak in Henniker looks full on this mild winter day. Skiers and snowboarders are coming down the mountain, one after the other.

Joni Aubin and her colleagues spent much of the day before getting ready for these crowds – and not just on the slopes, either. Though she manages the snow sports office, Aubin helped out in the Tradewinds Café, wrapping up stacks of a Pats Peak specialty: the giant M&M cookie.

The Cornucopia Project teaches kids to grow food -- and to make a lifetime of healthy eating choices. Susan Ellingwood and her third-graders in Dublin are old hands in their school garden -- which was established with help from the Cornucopia Project.

We post most Foodstuffs updates on Thursdays, but today we’re looking at something that takes place on Mondays – Meatless Mondays. The idea is that even those who regularly partake of meat will eschew it for a single night, for a host of reasons, including health or environmental benefits.

Chances are at least a few of us have once again vowed to eat healthy in the new year. And, chances are, those of us who have made that resolution will run into a big challenge: how do you eat healthy when you're eating out?

This month for Foodstuffs I’ve been talking with New Hampshire bakers about what they do at the holidays. This week, it’s my turn. And I’ve got a very special baker working with me - my two year old son, Owen, who has a special message for you: “Hello, people! I’m making cookies people!’

Temperatures are set to reach the single digits this week in Durham, home to the main campus of the University of New Hampshire - but at least one house in town will be plenty hot.

Durham town administrator Todd Selig says he won himself a bottle of Louisiana hot sauce in a friendly wager with Hammond, Louisiana mayor Mayson Foster. The wager was over last weekend's football playoff game between the UNH Wildcats and the Southeastern Louisiana University Lions - a game, it should be noted, that was played in a venue called Strawberry Stadium.

For many of us the science of chocolate begins and ends with that great literary and cinematic candyman, Willy Wonka, who insisted chocolate was only best when it was churned by waterfall.

Of course, Wonka lived in the world of pure imagination, but the science of chocolate is pretty interesting in this world as well, as a group of Granite Staters found out in a recent "Science on Tap" event in Manchester.